Understanding Tidal Dissipation in Gaseous Giant Planets

Understanding tidal dissipation in gaseous giant planets : the respective contributions of their core and envelope

Authors:

Guenel et al

Abstract:

Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. New constraints are now obtained both in the Solar and exoplanetary systems. Tidal dissipation in planets is intrinsically related to their internal structure. In particular, fluid and solid layers behave differently under tidal forcing. Therefore, their respective dissipation reservoirs have to be compared. In this work, we compute separately the contributions of the potential dense rocky/icy core and of the convective fluid envelope of gaseous giant planets, as a function of core size and mass. We then compare the associated dissipation reservoirs, by evaluating the frequency-average of the imaginary part of the Love numbers k22 in each region. We demonstrate that in general both mechanisms must be taken into account.